United Kingdom.  Uncovering the Urban Geography of Cambridge

A few years ago, I was invited to team-teach an honors course involving students from my university who traveled to Cambridge, England.  The other instructor (a professor of English) and I decided that our course would focus on skills involving the interpretation of urban landscapes and travel writing.  The plan called for me to work with students for the first week of the three week course.  During the second week, students would travel to their choice of European countries and maintain a detailed journal.  They would return to Cambridge for the final week with my colleague who would help them improve their travel writing skills.  The reading list for my portion of the course included essays written by two well-known cultural geographers:  Pierce Lewis’ “Axioms for Reading the Landscape” and Donald Meinig’s “The Beholding Eye: Ten Versions of the Same Scene.” 

Arriving by train from London, I was joined by the director of my university’s scholar development program who also oversaw the course I was teaching.  Cambridge (population 145,000) is located 89 kilometers north of London.  The area has a long history of human occupation that includes serving as a center for trade during Roman times.  In 1068 the Normans built a fortress on Castle Hill northwest of the River Cam and in 1205, Cambridge received a town charter from the English Crown.  Four years later, scholars from Oxford helped establish Cambridge University, the world’s fourth oldest institution of higher learning.  Notable Cambridge alums include naturalist Charles Darwin, physicists Issac Newton and Stephen Hawking, primatologist Jane Goodall, and mathematician Alan Turing.  Other well-known graduates are actress Emma Thompson, comedian Sascha Baron Cohen, and reigning British monarch, King Charles III.

Since I had arrived a few days before my students, I decided to learn more about the city’s stately buildings, cobblestone streets, Tutor homes, and medieval churches.  Traveling by taxi from the train station, I dropped off my suitcase at Magdalene (pronounced “Maudlyn”) College, one of 31 colleges that are part of Cambridge University.  Magdalene College is located on the northwest side of the city center, along a bend of the River Cam and at the foot of Castle Hill.  Continuing on foot, I passed several academic buildings including Corpus Christi College.  Founded in 1352, Corpus Christi is the only college established by citizens of the town.  Behind a manicured lawn is the college’s main building, called New Court, that dates to the 1820s.  To the left of the building’s main entrance is the dining hall and to the right is Parker Library.  My route took me along Rose Crescent Street which connects Market and Trinity Streets.  The curving, cobblestone street is lined with grey brick and sandstone townhouses sitting over ground floor shops.  Among other iconic buildings, I passed Round Church, one of four similarly designed churches in England.  Round Church was constructed by Knights Templar in 1130.  Another brief stop was St. Johns College, founded in 1511 on the site of a monastic house. 

At midday I paused for lunch at the Pickerel Inn, located adjacent to the River Cam.  Established in 1608, the Pickerel previously served as a gin palace, hotel, and brothel.  C.S. Lewis (author of Chronicles of Narnia) frequented the pub while he served as a fellow (teacher) at Cambridge.  Along with a range of British ales, the inn offers “pub food.”  I found an empty table and ordered fish and chips and an “Old Peculiar” ale.  Later in the afternoon I stopped at The Eagle (aka “RAF Bar”).  Considered the second oldest pub in Cambridge after the Pickerel, The Eagle was a favorite of Royal Air Force (RAF) pilots during WWII who used wax candles to write their names, squadrons numbers, and other messages on the ceiling.  In February 1953, molecular biologist Francis Crick made an announcement to patrons that he and a colleague had uncovered “the secret of life” through their identification of the structure of DNA. 

The following day I greeted my students as they arrived at Magdalene.  Among the smallest of Cambridge University’s colleges by enrollment (340 undergraduates and 200 postgraduates), Magdalene began as a hostel for Benedictine student-monks in 1428 and became part of Cambridge University in 1542.  Notable Magdalene College alums include Everest mountaineer George Mallory and nature writer John McPhee.  First admitting women in 1988, Magdalene was the last all male college at Cambridge.  The college’s buildings are located on both sides of the River Cam.  The main building is on Magdalene Street and a short walk from the Pickerel Inn.  Today, the college has just over 100 fellows and a support staff of 120.

Our group was scheduled to stay at “The Village,” a dormitory built in the 1930s.  The rooms were comfortable but spartan, with students and instructors sharing bathrooms located in a common hallway.  Given that students enrolled in the class were high achievers, I hadn’t anticipated dealing with behavior issues.  However, sometime after lunch I received an urgent summons to meet with the porter (Magdalene’s building manager).  On arrival I was informed that a few of my students had disconnected a smoke alarm in the dormitory’s kitchen.  On further investigation, I learned that the students unplugged the blaring smoke alarm after burning a meal they were cooking on a stovetop.  When flames emerged, they tossed the burning skillet out of an open second story window.

Our class meetings were held in a modest-sized and traditionally furnished conference room. Our first few sessions were designed to prepare students for fieldwork involving observation and notetaking. Students would then draft brief essays about what they could see from an observation point located somewhere in town. Observation points could be an outdoor table at a pub, a park bench, or any public place that offered a view of the city. Each essay was to be built around one of Meinig’s ten themes for interpreting landscapes (landscape as nature, habitat, artifact, system, problem, wealth, ideology, history, place, or aesthetic). For the next several days we met in the morning to discuss observation methods and set goals and in the late afternoon to share and discuss completed or partially completed essays.